Brand awareness is an inevitability. We cannot walk but five steps without our eyes being assaulted by advertisements, by suggestions to buy or experience what we were previously unaware of. For Sparks, it hopefully means acquiring a fresh kit bag from JanSport. Their second single ahead of Mad!, JanSport Backpack, is not an ode to firm carry-ons but another suggestion of free spirits and liberation in the wild. Their previous song, Do Things My Own Way, already called for independence. JanSport Backpack calls on us to do something with that newfound freedom. But the hyper specific, microscopic occasion which leads to wild and imaginative worlds as heard on The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, is lost here. Focus on the bag and the story it tells. JanSport Backpack sounds a bit tired of itself when it has to detail those emotional moments, those crucial parts of the song.
Because without the clear route, as Sparks find here, the punchier cry of spiritual endurance is lost. JanSport Backpack falls into the foulest of occasions almost on accident. There is no doubting the route set out by Sparks here, the earnestness of what they try to do with this recent single. What does a bag tell us? The people watching fun, sitting in some airport or train station and observing passersby, is found on JanSport Backpack. It sounds, though, that Sparks has landed on a dud. A viewing platform into the mind of a new traveller, someone without the blisters and bruises of a well-versed walk around the world. JanSport Backpack is neither a slow burner nor an immediate pay-off, it lingers in the middle and Sparks, for the first time in a long while, sound unsure of where their narrative pay-off will come from.
It is not from the encounter, nor the observation. Hearing the term JanSport Backpack had some grander effect on Ron and Russell, the assembly of letters, how it sounds when sung, is of interest to them. But they do little with it, and the usual strengths of their instrumental style have evaporated. Tired-sounding synth is the trouble here, but at the very least the overarching story, the feeling of independence and freedom in travel, is found. That much cannot be taken from JanSport Backpack. You can rip at everything found within, from the relatively tame and uneventful synth to the unremarkable sense of questioning heard in the lyrics, but the message and hope remains the same. A few moments towards the end feel that inspiration bubble over.
There is hope for JanSport Backpack, then. Sparks sounds as though they struggle in tone here. Whether to head down a menacing, murderous route of bagless intensity or to provide the constant hope, to feed the beast heard roaring through Do Things My Own Way. Still, there is heart to JanSport Backpack, the crucial core of any Sparks song. That much is intact, and it leaves their second MAD! single with at least some heart, some delight. There is not much more to it than that. Everything there is to gauge about the song, its intense meaning and desires, the shortcomings too, can be heard rather fast. It is not that Sparks are on autopilot or faking it, but the culmination of decent parts amounts to little here.
